Kristen Stewart: Actress or cipher?

Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg in the 2009 film "Adventureland."

Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg in the 2009 film "Adventureland."

Michael Phillips

She's the same in everything. This is the charge you hear from people who do not like, for example, Kristen Stewart. The"Twilight" star portrays a medieval warrior-princess in"Snow White and the Huntsman," opening Friday.

Owing mostly to the "Twilight" juggernaut, whose global success set a sudden-star like Stewart on the defensive, the actress has provoked a significant chorus of naysayers along with the fans. Predictability — sameness — is the most common knock against any actor, has been since Francis X. Bushmanand Theda Bara ruled the silent screen. Audiences revere versatility in their screen performers. Yet they also love consistency — a relatable, human-scaled touch.

One filmgoer's notion of the right sort of familiarity is another's idea of she's the same in everything.

Stewart is an intriguing example of this cinematic Rorschach test. Since she played the enigmatic free spirit in "Into the Wild,"and especially in little-seen (and really good) pictures like "Adventureland"and "The Runaways,"Stewart has been more of a concealer than a revealer. It's a different story in the forthcoming "On the Road,"which premiered in competition last month at the Cannes Film Festival. Stewart's uninhibited turn as Marylou seemed to me truer, less studied and pose-y, than the work of her male counterparts. Certainly Stewart tends to become more alive and alert outside the "Twilight" universe, although her performance in the first "Twilight" was the thing, I think, that made that franchise go. She's honest. She doesn't force anything.

An odd but worthwhile fantasy in many ways, "Snow White and the Huntsman" represents a stretch for Stewart: a period film, with an English accent, for starters. The excellent Slate film critic Dana Stevens takes issue with "Stewart's whole manner, her slouchy bearing and general aura of sulky passivity, (which) make her ill-suited to play a deposed princess whose irresistible charisma enables her to lead a peasant revolt ... the image of her leading a castle siege in full battle armor is so incongruous it might come from one of those parody trailers that opened Ben Stiller's 'Tropic Thunder.'"

So be it; Stevens feels about Stewart the way I do about Stewart's "Twilight" co-star Taylor Lautner, who strikes me as a strange quirk of celebrity fate more than an actor, and certainly more than a star. Stewart's range is not wide. But you know what? People made the sameness charge against Jesse Eisenberg, her "Adventureland" co-star. (I love that movie.) And then came"The Social Network," which allowed Eisenberg to rise to the occasion of meeting a trickier, more ambiguous character than he'd met on screen before. And a lot of people realized he was on the right path all along.

Seeming yourself, comfortably and effectively, in more than one kind of picture: That's not easy. The risk is the charge that you're the same in everything, even if you're not.

Movies on the radio: Michael talks about "Snow White and the Huntsman" and"Moonrise Kingdom"with Bill Leff at 7:45 a.m. Friday on WGN-AM 720.